Learn how to level up your newsletter from successful creators.

Sundays 👉 The unique journey of a different newsletter creator

Wednesdays 👉 Articles with unique insights and recommendations

Combining micro and macro understanding of newsletter business

I dream big.

I’m learning not to be afraid to dream big with Newsletter Circle.

My dream is to create a full-fledged media company for newsletter creators.

But as I worked on my next steps, I found myself stuck among too many ideas, which led to my first realization:

So, I focused on listening to you. Last week, I shared my simple process of having one-on-one calls with Newsletter Circle subscribers, where I seek answers to the following questions:

• Who am I writing to?

• What do they like / not like about my content?

• How do they position their newsletters, and what are their main struggles?

During these one-on-one deep-dive conversations, I’ve been gathering qualitative insights and expanding on the answers when necessary.

However, there is a maximum number of calls I can take to gather insights.

So, the second realization followed:

Imagine that, after the calls, I might decide to niche down and focus only on smaller newsletters with a maximum of 5,000 subscribers. This would mean building products and services for those creators. But I have no idea how many newsletters exist in this segment.

Or I might decide to expand my reach to non-English-speaking newsletter creators. Again, I have no idea how many exist.

Or I might decide to explore starting a course about paid subscriptions. I have no idea about how many creators are using the free and paid subscription model, which might eventually impact my potential market.

With this aim, I decided to create a huge newsletter database.

After a quick exploration phase, I began building this database by first identifying Substack newsletters, which are the easiest to gather data from.

With this aim, I gathered over 49,000 newsletters from Substack and some key data related to them. 

There is more to add and the list will probably be doubled.

I’m also working on how to add Beehiiv and ConvertKit newsletters to the database.

I will compile a detailed report from these findings that will provide numerous key insights about the newsletter space.

Let’s have a look at a few initial findings:

• 90% of newsletters are in English.

  The second most common language is Portuguese, followed by Spanish, French, Italian and German.

• 27% of the newsletters disclose the number of subscribers they have on the landing page.

  50% of these 13,400 newsletters have subscribers between 1,000 and 2,500.

  20.7% has 2,500 - 5,000 subscribers, which is the second biggest group.

• 42% of newsletters offer a paid plan.

All of the above figures include both active and inactive newsletters. However,

• 41% of all newsletters didn’t send any issues in March, indicating a potential of over 20,000 inactive newsletters.

So, in the upcoming report, I’ll delve into the details of active and inactive newsletters separately and look for the following:

• Publishing frequencies

• Language preferences

• Age of the newsletters

• List sizes

• Categories

• List sizes for paid & free subscriptions

• Pricing details for paid newsletters

• Preferred social media channels

• Usage of recommendations features

The number of newsletters included in the database will also increase.

This database will be a gold mine for me. It illustrates the potential in the market and provides unique opportunities for me to introduce Newsletter Circle to more creators.

But it will also be a gold mine for you to understand the space you’re part of and other creators' behaviors and strategies.

Let me know if you're interested in this report so that you can get it first!

I’m also experimenting with these strategies and sharing my process to give you some inspiration.

Please don’t underestimate the value of spending time understanding your market and audience. It all starts with finding a product & market fit.

Whatever the niche you’re creating your newsletter about, find ways to gather data about your target audience and your market.

Outsource technical tasks that you’re not familiar with and save time.

Explore and use tools like Apollo, Reverse Contact or Megahit* that will save you time.

Don’t hesitate to invest some money while building the foundation of your newsletter business, which will lead to a bigger return in the long run.

That’s all for today. See you on Sunday with another exciting interview!

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